unthing
English
Etymology
Calque of German Unding, equivalent to un- + thing. Compare also West Frisian ûnding, Dutch onding.
Noun
unthing (plural unthings)
- Something irrelevant or inconsequential; a non-issue; an absurdity.
- Synonym: nothingburger
- 1964, Testimony of members of Congress, interested individuals, and organizations:
- They made a thing of an unthing and put it on paper.
- 1998, U.C. Mandal, J. Rawat, Public Administration: Principles and Practice, page 272:
- Whether or not PPB is an unthing in the federal bureaucracy, the budgetary concepts that are represented by it and its conceptual predecessors are still viable within OMB: control, management, and planning.
- 2006, Anne Carolyn Klein, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Unbounded Wholeness:
- This hidden heart essence, so secret,
An unthing untouched by the eterne […]
- 2015, Catherine Wilson, Leibniz's Metaphysics, page 218:
- It does not follow from either the metaphor or the possibility of defining this space mathematically that it must be Leibniz's dreaded unthing “unthing” – a something that is nothing.
See also
- thingly